Valve Corp., the famous game maker who brought the world the popular franchises Half Life, CounterStrike, Portal, Team Fortress, and Left 4 Dead, made waves last week when it posted a job listing seeking hardware developers to help it design first-party hardware. That led to fervent speculation -- was Valve designing a gaming console? Was it making a "brain controller"?

I. Valve, the Hyper-Google

A new report in The New York Times may answer some of those questions, as well as provide a bit of insight into Valve.

Founded by ex-Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) employees, Valve has no bosses, despite being incorporated. The company's employee manual, obtained by The New York Times reads, "We don’t have any management, and nobody ‘reports to’ anybody else."

Valve's free-form atmosphere puts even Google Inc.'s (GOOG) policy of giving employees 20 percent of their time to work on pet projects to shame. At Valve employees make their own way (supposedly) 100 percent of the time. The NYT describes:

New employees aren’t even told where to work in the company. Instead, they are expected to decide on their own where they can contribute most. Many desks at Valve are on wheels. After figuring out what they want to do, workers simply push their desks over to the group they want to join.

The Seattle-area company zealously retains its employees. Gabe Newell -- who The NYT says is "CEO" of the company, but only by empty formality -- comments, "I get freaked out any time one person leaves. It seems like a bug in the system."

II. Building Gaming Goggles

The report says that Valve has hired Jeri Ellsworth, a self-taught inventor and chip designer, whose early work includes circuits for pinball machines that Valve has in its headquarters’ lobby. To make her prototypes at Valve Ms. Ellsworth employs 3D printers, laser cutters, and other bleeding edge modular manufacturing tools. Comments Ms. Ellsworth, "At one point, I said a hardware lab could be very expensive, it could be like a million dollars. Gabe [Newell] said, 'That's it?'"

Ms. Ellsworth is working on a team led by Michael Abrash -- a former id Software veteran -- to produce augmented reality goggles, somewhat similar to the Android-powered "Google Goggles" (officially dubbed "Glass Explorers"). Wearing the Valve goggles, gamers will be transported into the world of the game.

A prototype of Valve's gaming goggles sits in their lab.
[Image Source: Stuart-Isett for The New York Times]

Valve is reportedly still ironing out how it wants to produce the designs -- but it already has working prototypes. According to Mr. Abrash, the goggles will likely first be employed in virtual reality gaming (where the entire scene is animated), then 3 to 5 years down the road will be upgraded to support augmented reality gaming (where game world objects are overlayed on real world settings).

There are both technical and social hurdles to the augmented reality gaming vision. For one thing, someone walking down the street playing Half Life might be a bit dangerous. And then there're technical challenges, like how to popular "glue" faux billboards onto real world buildings to enhance the fantasy.

Thus far all attempts to produce a virtual or augment reality console have failed for the most part. While some smartphone apps are now offering mild augmented reality, perhaps the most ambitious virtual or augment reality device was Nintendo Comp., Ltd.'s (TYO:7904) ill-fated "Virtual Boy", which TopTenzlists as the "#1 video game console flop of all time".

Virtual Boy, the most famous virtual reality console, was a massive commercial flop.
[Image Source: TopTenz]

III. Valve is Drifting Apart From Microsoft

Gabe Newell, in his interview preached radical anti-authoritarianism, saying he would rather dissolve the company than sell it. The report claims that Electronics Arts Inc. (EA) was keen to purchase Valve years ago for $1B USD. Valve rebuffed the offers, and according to the report is today worth $2.5B USD.

Valve has grown increasingly critical of Microsoft, and says its games play faster in Linux than Windows.

Gabe Newell strongly resents this approach from his former employer of 13 years (Mr. Newell was among the "Microsoft Millionaires" of the 1990s). In a comment to The NYT he stated, "We would say to Microsoft, we understand all these frustrations about the challenges to your business, but trying to copy Apple will accelerate, not slow, Microsoft’s decline.'"

Incidentally one thing not mentioned in the piece was what operating system the wearable goggles use. Given Valve's anti-Microsoft sentiments of late, it seems likely they're built on Linux. That hypothesis would make sense as Valve recently ported its source codes to also use the open graphics interface OpenGL, instead of just Microsoft's proprietary PC graphics API DirectX. The port allows Valve's software to run on Linux and Apple Mac computers. Valve claims that Left 4 Dead2 is running faster on Ubuntu 12.04 Linux (OpenGL 4.3) than on Windows 7 SP1 (DirectX 11).

I don't know what's fun in following lunacy that the HL2 plot is. Some crazy fuck wakes up in some crazy shit railway car and the fucking lame g-dude with a case says some dumb bullshit about saving the world, then you as a MIT graduate and PhD in physics are given a fucking dumb crowbar (of course!) and proceed shooting stuff up while some crazy lunacy shit is going around, some dumb dudes with white masks shoot some other dudes in blue robes, then the aliens I've been shooting in HL1 SUDDENLY decide that I'm a master and they have to help me to save the world, then some fucking megainsects start popping up from the floors and from the sand, then some lunacy with huge walking tripods plus a fucking dead town with people walking around in bloodied shirts and with things on their heads, then some flying superfat maggots run afoul and game is over. WHAT. THE. FUCK. WAS. THAT. PEOPLE?

I mean the shitty old Source engine is not even the main flaw of the game, the main flaw is the plot writer. This fuck should be shot or fired and told never to come back. He or she can not write anything reselmbling a plot of the sci fi shooter.

In Crysis franchise there is at least NEVER a question of WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT AND HOW THE FUCK IT EVEN GOT CREATED IN SOME SICK ILLOGICAL MIND? In Crysis there are no stupid fucking g-dudes wandering around aimlessly with cases and suits and shit. There are no giant insects popping out of nowhere, from underneath the floor or something, and the aliens in Crysis will NEVER do the fucking dumbest shit from HL2 like telling you oh my master you hafta save the world now, you don't have time blah blah.

See, Crysis's plot IS A PLOT. It's not the best and it's bog standard alien invasion meddled with Tunguska and shit but compared to a load of senseless illogical pile of junk in HL2 it is a work of art.

That's why I'm not that worried about HL3. The engine is probably going to be crappy MS-DOS cubuical shit compared to Crysis state of the art tech and with regard to plot I believe Newell probably keeps the same demented idiot who wrote the plot for the second installment. Oh well... better for me I guess as I have one less vaporware to be concerned with.

THERE'S A MIT PHD WITH A CROWBAR RUNNING AROUND SHOOTING DUDES IN WHITE MASKS WHO SHOOT THE OTHER DUDES IN BLUE ROBES, HE ALSO OCCASIONALLY HITS A FEW UNDERGROUND INSECTS AND FALLS INTO A VILLAGE FULL OF BLOODIED DUDES WITH THINGS ON THEIR HEADS, THEN HE'S HELPED BY THE ALIENS HE'S BEEN SHOOTING IN THE LAST INSTALLMENT AND IN THE END A FEW HUGE MAGGOTS FLY AWAY. GAME OVER.

AND THE G-SPOT DUDE!!! THE ONE THAT WANDERS AFTER MIT PHD WITH CROWBAR!!! AND HIS SUIT AND CASE!!! SUCH A NICE PLOT, UNBELIEVABLE BRILLIANCE!!! ESPECIALLY THE THINGS G-SPOT SAYS, THEY ARE SO IMPORTANT AND VALUABLE :))) hahahahaaa man I love this clown and ESPECIALLY I love how brainwashed some dumb HL2 fanatics like you are :))) LOL